The Cameron Highlands - anyone for tea?
The bus station in Penang is inconveniently placed in the centre of the east side of the island, nowhere near Georgetown. So we ended up having to get a taxi, shared with another English girl called Helen, and then managed to catch a bus which took us all the way to the Cameron Highlands. The journey was uneventful but very scenic, and we arrived in the highlands village of Tanah Rata six hours after leaving Penang.The Cameron Highlands are named after an Englishman who 'discovered' them in the nineteenth century. As they start at an altitude of 1300m they are much cooler than the rest of Malaysia (like an English summer) and so were a popular retreat for colonists, some of whom established the vast tea plantations that can be found here. Unfortunately we had become so adapted to the heat of the lowlands that we were, to quote Chris, 'a bit nippy' in the evenings, but on the plus side our fleeces came out of our bags for the first time.
We booked a room at Father's Guesthouse, which became one of my favourite places out of those we've stayed in. It's situated on a hill over the village and is surrounded by trees, making it quite secluded and peaceful and blocking the view of the not so nice hotel-resorts that Malaysian holiday makers stay in. We paid an extra 50p each for a double rather than a dorm, and were given a room in one of the small nissen huts; sounds horrible but in fact they were very clean and it made us feel a bit like we were camping. Hot showers were a bonus too.
The main thing to do in the highlands is walk, and there are around 14 marked trails through the jungle. From our point of view this was great as it meant we could go off on our own without a guide and do as much or as little as we wanted. It rains in the highlands every afternoon so we decided the best plan was to get up early and walk and then chill out in the afternoon, which worked out well as the guesthouse showed two films from 5pm every day.
On our first day we thought we'd start off gently, but it didn't quite work out that way. We set out on route nine which is around 3km and pretty much flat or downhill the whole way, although there were one or two exciting parts where the path had fallen down the hill. Due to our early start we completed this by 10am so we thought we'd walk another 2km up a scenic road to the Boh Tea Plantation. Unfortunately we'd been wrongly informed on the distance and it was actually 5km, all uphill, but very pretty. So with the walk down our 'easy' day ended up as a 14km hike and we were pretty exhausted by the time we finished.
The Boh Tea Estate, along with its associated plantation the Sungai Palace Estate, takes up a good proportion of the Cameron Highlands. I'd never seen tea growing before and here it's very impressive as it completely covers the hills for miles in every direction. At the centre of the estate is a working factory where the tea is processed, and a tea room has been added to welcome visitors. On arriving we watched a video about how tea is grown and harvested, and then were able to walk round the factory and watch it being fermented and dried which was very interesting. Afterwards we felt we really should try some so we had tea and scones, which made us feel alot better after the long walk. The tea was delicious and after that we had it with nearly every meal - Chris has become very attached to 'teaccinos'.
Despite slightly overdoing it on the first day we thought we should try and push ourselves, so the following morning we attemped trail ten, a steep climb to the summit of Gunung Jasar. The views were good and only slightly spoiled by a large telegraph pilon on the top! From the end of the trail we walked to the village of Brinchang, north of Tanah Rata, which made us feel good as it was not nearly as nice. After lunch we thought we'd head back along trail two, which turned out to be an almost invisible path out the back of a monastery. The trail itself was alot more of a challenge than we had predicted, running steeply up the mountainside then back down to a stream in the jungle, then crawling back up again; a pattern that repeated for an hour and a half. This combined with the fact that we had to clamber over and under fallen trees and fight off mosquitos along the way left us totally exhausted - we were very ready for our tea and scones when we returned.
Despite enjoying the highlands very much by the end of the second day we realised we had covered most of the challenging walks in the area. Rather than stay another day and risk getting bored we decided to book a bus to Taman Negara, for more walking but this time in the heat of the rainforest rather than the cool of the jungle.
Emily
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